Who Is Schismatic? Part 2
Michael Davies
I would imagine that any orthodox Catholic would be in full agreement with all that I wrote in last month's issue, even those who have never supported Mgr. Lefebvre and, in some cases, insist that he is schismatic. Such Catholics might well accuse me of begging the question. They would agree that I have proved that Archbishop Weakland is in a state of de facto schism, and would make the same judgment with regard to other American bishops, but they could argue quite reasonably that what I have written does not disprove the charge of schism against Mgr. Lefebvre. They could claim, again quite reasonably, that two wrongs do not make a right. It cannot be denied that Mgr. Lefebvre has disobeyed the Holy Father in a very serious matter, one that involves his divine prerogative of ruling the Church upon earth. What grounds are there, then, for arguing that Archbishop Lefebvre is not a schismatic?
A Question of Perspective
In the first part of this article Catholic writers of unimpeachable orthodoxy and total integrity were cited as claiming that we are witnessing the disintegration of Christianity; that there is a de facto schism in the U.S.A.; but that as long as bishops give some kind of lip service to Catholic principles the Vatican will allow them to do as they like; that the Vatican has emulated Pontius Pilate by washing its hands of its responsibility for protecting the faithful by abandoning them to the very prelates who are destroying the faith; and that the Catholic Church in America is in danger of collapsing into disjointed fragments. This description is equally applicable to other Western countries. It was also shown that irrefutable evidence exists to substantiate these allegations. All this is, I believe, beyond dispute.
As I have shown in Volume I of Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, even before the Second Vatican Council the Archbishop was already guaranteed a place in history as the greatest missionary bishop of this century. I show there that even his most implacable opponents have paid tribute to his great personal holiness and his devotion to the faith. He has always been particularly outstanding in his love of and loyalty to the Holy See. I am sure that even his severest critics would not deny that all the Archbishop's actions are motivated by a sincere love of and desire to serve the Church. They would also accept, I am sure, that his every action since the Council has been a reaction to the disintegration of Western Catholicism. His motivation has been to defend the Faith against those who are manifestly destroying it. There is thus an immediate difference between Archbishop Weakland and Archbishop Lefebvre. The former is undermining the traditional teaching on faith and morals, and harming souls; the latter is upholding the traditional teaching and saving souls. This puts Archbishop Lefebvre's disobedience into a totally different category from that of Archbishop Weakland. The morality of any act that is not intrinsically sinful must be considered primarily from the intention of the person performing it. This, as I shall show, is recognized in the Code of Canon Law.
I do not imagine that even the worst enemy of Mgr. Lefebvre would claim that he has ever been motivated by anything but a sincere desire to serve the Church, and so there cannot be the least suggestion of any schismatic intent in any of his actions. The purpose of Canon Law is identical with the purpose of the Church which is identical to the purpose of her divine Founder, the salvation of souls. Salus animarum suprema lex: the salvation of souls is the supreme law. The salvation of souls has been the motivating force of Archbishop Lefebvre's entire priestly life. In an article which I wrote for the September 1983 Angelus, I presented a detailed study of the authentic Catholic teaching on obedience to authority. It is, briefly, that a Catholic is bound to disobey his religious superiors if he is convinced that such disobedience is demanded in the interests of the supreme law of the Church—the salvation of souls. I showed that these superiors include the Pope himself, although in this instance the initial presumption must be that obedience to the Pope is the right course of action, and that he must be obeyed unless one of his subjects has a conscientious sense that to do so would be a sin.
Schism and Disobedience
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, schism consists primarily in a refusal of submission to the Pope or communion with the members of the Church united to him. On first sight it would appear that, whatever the subjective motivation of the Archbishop, as discussed above, he must be in a state of objective schism as he has refused to submit to the Pope on a very grave matter involving his supreme power of jurisdiction. However, standard Catholic textbooks of theology make it clear that while all schisms involve disobedience not all acts of disobedience are schismatic. If this were so, as was noted at the beginning of this article, it would mean that the number of American bishops who are not schismatic would not reach double figures.
The distinction between disobedience and schism is made very clear in the article on schism in the very authoritative Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique. The article is by Father Yves Congar who is certainly no friend of Archbishop Lefebvre. He explains that schism and disobedience are so similar that they are often confused. Father Congar writes that schism involves a refusal to accept the existence of legitimate authority in the Church, for example, Luther's rejection of the papacy. Father Congar explains that the refusal to accept a decision of legitimate authority in a particular instance does not constitute schism but disobedience. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains that for a Catholic to be truly schismatic he would have to intend "to sever himself from the Church as far as in him lies." It adds that "not every disobedience is schism; in order to possess this character it must include besides the transgression of the command of the superiors, a denial of their divine right to command." Not only does Mgr. Lefebvre not deny the divine right of the Pope to command, but he affirms repeatedly his recognition of the Pope's authority and his intention of never breaking away from Rome. The Archbishop made his attitude clear in the July/August 1989 issue of 30 Days: "We pray for the Pope every day. Nothing has changed with the consecrations last June 30. We are not sedevacantists. We recognize in John Paul II the legitimate Pope of the Catholic Church. We don't even say that he is a heretical Pope. We only say that his Modernist actions favor heresy."
The 5 May 1988 Protocol
The fact that Archbishop Lefebvre tried so hard for so long to reach an agreement with the Vatican is a very important factor in demonstrating how far schism has always been from his mind. The agreement which he and Cardinal Ratzinger signed on 5 May 1988 will be seen by future historians as one of the most important Church documents of this century. Its greatest significance lies precisely in the fact that the Holy See was prepared to accept that the Archbishop and the Society of St. Pius X could not be considered as a schismatic group. It was prepared to accept all the Society priests, religious, seminaries, colleges, and schools—without any demand for retraining or professions of faith. In other words, the formation given by the Society to its seminarians, and the teaching they later provided in Society establishments, was considered to be totally in conformity of the Faith. What a blow this must have been for the bishops, priests, and Catholic journals who had so long branded the Archbishop and his Society as at least quasi-schismatic. Although the Archbishop eventually decided that he could not in conscience go through with the agreement, nothing can detract from the fact that the Vatican was prepared to give this recognition to the Society. It is, incidentally, not true that the Archbishop repudiated the agreement the day after he had signed it. He did not take this drastic step until 2 June 1988.1
Prudence and Schism: An Important Distinction
Where the 30 June 1988 consecrations are concerned, a distinction must be made between whether they were prudent and whether they constituted a schismatic act. It is possible to take issue with the Archbishop on the wisdom of carrying out these consecrations while repudiating entirely any suggestion that doing so constituted a schismatic act. I happened to be at The Angelus Press, working on the proofs of Apologia III during the final stages of the negotiations of the 5 May protocol, and I can testify to the delight and enthusiasm of Father Laisney, Father Cooper, Father Carl and the entire Angelus staff at the reconciliation of the Society and the Holy See for which we had worked and prayed so long. The prospect of such a reconciliation had been the motivating force in my own life for almost two decades, and not, I admit, only for wholly laudable reasons. I had always believed that such an agreement would result in dozens or even scores of cases of terminal apoplexy among Modernist prelates forced to extend recognition to Society establishments which they had denigrated consistently and stridently as schismatic. When the Vatican eventually gave 15 August as a definite date upon which Archbishop Lefebvre could consecrate a Society priest I felt that he could have waited for six weeks to see whether this promise would be kept before consecrating four bishops contrary to the express command of Pope John Paul II. The reason he was not willing to wait was made clear in his own account of why he repudiated the agreement.2 The fundamental reason is that the Archbishop had lost faith in the ability of the Vatican to "deliver the goods." He did not believe that either the pope or Cardinal Ratzinger were playing a double game, or that they had promised the 15 August consecration without any intention of allowing it to take place. The question at issue was whether the Pope would have had the resolution to permit the 15 August consecration and force diocesan bishops to give official recognition to Society establishments throughout the world. Mgr. Lefebvre was well aware that in 1983 Cardinal Ratzinger had assured him that the Pope would be publishing a document allowing the free use of the Tridentine Mass once more, but the Holy Father capitulated to pressure from the Liberal establishment and the document was suppressed.
On 16 May 1989, a heartbreaking event took place which can only be interpreted as indicating that Mgr. Lefebvre was correct in his pessimistic assessment of the Holy Father's will to confront the Liberal establishment within the Church. The Commission Ecclesia Dei, established after the consecrations to represent the interests of traditional Catholics, had gone to a great deal of trouble in drawing up a decree to implement the Pope's own clearly expressed wish in the document after which the Commission was named, that all the necessary measures should be taken to guarantee respect for the rightful aspirations of those attached to the traditional Latin liturgy.3 The decree would have removed all the restrictions imposed upon the celebration of the Tridentine Mass. On 16 May 1989, the Pope met Cardinal Hume, the leaders of three other European episcopal conferences, and members of the Curia, and capitulated to their demands that he should not allow the Ecclesia Dei decree to be published. It seems that the Pope also surrendered to their demands to bring a virtual halt to the granting of celebrets permitting traditionally-minded priests to celebrate the traditional Mass. Even the ultra-papalist Wanderer accepted that this must give good reason for supporters of Archbishop Lefebvre to say: "I told you so!"
One also feels bound to ask how much confidence one can place in the resolution of a Pope who maintains communion with Archbishop Weakland and who surrendered so abjectly to the pro-Hunthausen lobby in the American hierarchy. I wrote in the 30 November 1988 issue of The Remnant that I did not "have the least doubt that the Holy See was totally sincere in its desire to reach an accord with the Society of St. Pius X and to honor the terms of the 5 May protocol." I meant, by the Holy See, Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger. I stand by this statement and I see no need to revise it. However, when writing the article in which I made this statement I failed to make a crucially important distinction, that between a sincere intention and the necessary resolution of the will to implement it. I have been promising for the past twelve years that my book on religious liberty would be completed within a matter of months, and when I made these promises I was totally sincere. I was not, however, able to deliver the goods that I had promised.
I was prompted to reconsider my negative reaction to the consecrations by a letter from a friend for whose judgment I could not possibly have a greater respect. If asked to list those for whose opinion I have the greatest respect I would place him second only to Mgr. Lefebvre himself. He commented:
In your "Letter from London" in the November 30th issue of The Remnant you say that you do not "have the least doubt that the Holy See was totally sincere in its desire to reach an accord with the Society of St. Pius X and to honor the terms of the 5th May protocol." I am, frankly, a little surprised to find you so convinced of Rome's "sincerity": after all, it was the Archbishop's public threat of illicit consecrations that brought Rome round to the surprisingly generous offer contained in the Ratzinger letter of July 28, 1987. Is it not always risky to try and gauge "sincerity" when the party concerned is acting under duress? Moreover, to be sincere in the desire to reach an accord may mean no more than to be sincere in the desire to avoid open rupture. It does not prove or guarantee that the terms of the accord will subsequently be honored... even if both the Pope and Cardinal Ratzinger were animated by a sincere desire to keep Ecône within the bounds of ecclesial communion: would they, i.e., the Pope and the Cardinal, have been able to ensure and if necessary enforce respect of the protocol terms by the bishops? And was not the Archbishop obliged to take this aspect fully into consideration and to conclude that despite all honest and sincere intentions on the part of "Rome," his Society would have been in grave danger from the contrary intent and action on the part of the bishops to whom it would then, inevitably, have become subject?
There is, of course, little point now in speculating on what might have been. Our prayers and our actions must, now, be directed towards obtaining an eventual reconciliation between the Society and the Holy See. The question of the prudence of the consecrations can, as I have explained, be considered independently of the allegation that they constituted an intrinsically schismatic act.
Intrinsically Schismatic?
The principal argument used by those claiming that Mgr. Lefebvre is in schism is that the consecration of a bishop without a papal mandate is an intrinsically schismatic act. A bishop who carries out such a consecration, it is claimed, becomes ipso facto a schismatic. This is not true. If such a consecration is an intrinsically schismatic act it would always have involved the penalty of excommunication. In the 1917 Code of Canon Law the offence was punished only by suspension (see Canon 2370 of the 1917 Code). Pope Pius XII had raised the penalty to excommunication as a response to the establishment of a schismatic church in China. The consecration of these illicit Chinese bishops differed radically from the consecrations carried out by Mgr. Lefebvre as the professed intention was to repudiate the authority of the Pope, that is, to deny that he has the right to govern the Church, and the illicitly consecrated Chinese bishops were given a mandate to exercise an apostolic mission. Neither Archbishop Lefebvre nor any of the bishops he has consecrated claim that they have powers of jurisdiction. They have been consecrated solely for the purpose of ensuring the survival of the Society by carrying out ordinations and also to perform confirmations. I do not wish to minimize in any way the gravity of the step take by Mgr. Lefebvre. The consecration of bishops without a papal mandate is far more serious matter than the ordination of priests as it involves a refusal in practice of the primacy or jurisdiction belonging by divine right to the Roman Pontiff. But the Archbishop could argue that the crisis afflicting the Church could not be more grave, and that grave measures were needed in response.
It appears to be taken for granted by most of the Archbishop's critics that he was excommunicated for the offense of schism, and the Vatican has certainly been guilty of fostering this impression. There is not so much as a modicum of truth in this allegation. The New Code of Canon Law includes a section beginning with Canon 1364 entitled "Penalties for Specific Offenses" (De Poenis in Singula Dicta). The first part deals with "Offenses against Religion and the Unity of the Church" (De Delictis contra Religionem et Ecclesiae Unitatem). Canon 1364 deals with the offense of schism which is, evidently, together with apostasy and heresy, one of the three fundamental offenses against the unity of the Church.
But the Archbishop was not excommunicated under the terms of this canon or, indeed, under any canon involving an offense against religion or the unity of the church. The canon cited in his excommunication comes from the third section of "Penalties for Specific Offenses" which is entitled "Usurpation of Ecclesial Functions and Offenses in their Exercise" (De Munerum Ecclesiasticorum Usurpationae Deque Delictis iniis Exercendis). The canon in question is Canon 1382, which reads: "A bishop who consecrates someone bishop and the person who receives such a consecration from a bishop without a pontifical mandate incur an automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication reserved to the Holy See."
The scandalous attempts to smear Archbishop Lefebvre with the offense of schism are, then, contrary to both truth and charity. A comparable smear under civil as opposed to ecclesiastical law would certainly justify legal action for libel involving massive damages. An accurate parallel would be to state that a man convicted of manslaughter had been convicted of first degree murder.
I must stress that what I have written here is not the dubious opinion of laymen unversed in the intricacies of Canon Law. Canon lawyers without the least shred of sympathy for Mgr. Lefebvre have repudiated the charge of schism made against him as totally untenable. Father Patrick Valdrini, Dean of the Faculty of Canon Law of the Institut Catholique in Paris noted in the 4 July 1988 issue of Valeurs actuelles that, as I have just explained, Mgr. Lefebvre was not excommunicated for schism but for the usurpation of an ecclesiastical function. He added that it is not the consecration of a bishop which constitutes schism but the conferral of an apostolic mission upon the illicitly consecrated bishop. It is this usurpation of the powers of the sovereign pontiff which proves the intention of establishing a parallel Church.
Cardinal Rosalio Lara, President of the Pontifical Commission for the Authentic Interpretation of Canon Law, commented on the consecrations in the 10 July 1988 issue of La Repubblica. It would be hard to imagine a more authoritative opinion. The Cardinal wrote:
The act of consecrating a bishop (without a papal mandate) is not in itself a schismatic act. In fact, the Code that deals with offenses is divided into two sections. One deals with offenses against religion and the unity of the Church, and these are apostasy, schism, and heresy. Consecrating a bishop with a pontifical mandate is, on the contrary, an offense against the exercise of a specific ministry. For example, in the case of the consecrations carried out by the Vietnamese Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc in 1976 and 1983, although the Archbishop was excommunicated he was not considered to have committed a schismatic act because there was no intention of a breach with the Church.
Excommunicated or Not Excommunicated?
I would hope that what has been written so far would be sufficient to convince any fair-minded Catholic that not only is Mgr. Lefebvre not a schismatic but there is no basis whatsoever in Canon Law for accusing him of this offense. But, I can imagine some of his critics saying, whatever he has been excommunicated for he has been excommunicated, and that no faithful Catholic can support him in good conscience. However, according to the New Code of Canon Law the Archbishop's excommunication cannot be considered valid. No canonical penalty is ever incurred without grave moral imputability (Canon 1321, §1). This means, in the terminology of moral theologians, subjective mortal sin. Archbishop Lefebvre would certainly deny having incurred grave moral imputability on the basis of Canon 1232, §4, which states that a person is not subject to a penalty if he has violated a law or precept on the grounds of necessity, providing that the action is not intrinsically evil or prejudicial to souls. If a case of necessity existed there could be no question of a valid excommunication. Professor Georg May, head of the faculty of Canon Law at the University of Mainz, explained in 1984 that:
In the Church, as in civil society, there can be a state of necessity, or emergency, or of urgency which cannot be overcome by observing the positive laws. Such situation exists in the Church when the continuation, order, or activity of the Church are threatened or harmed in an important way. This menace can bear mainly teaching, liturgy and ecclesiastical discipline.
Sufficient evidence has been provided in this article to indicate that the state of emergency referred to by Dr. May does exist. Pope Paul VI himself accepted that the Church is undergoing a process of self-destruction (L'Osservatore Romano, 8 December 1968). Archbishop Lefebvre believed, quite correctly, that it is essential for the well-being of the Church that when we enter the twenty-first century there should be an adequate number of priests who have received an orthodox and traditional seminary education. In order to ensure this he believed it essential to guarantee the future of his priestly Society, and he thus went ahead with the 30 June 1988 consecrations. This was, he claimed, justified as a case of necessity in accordance with Canon 1323, §4.
It can be argued that, in view of the 5 May 1988 protocol and the offer of a bishop on 15 August 1988, the Archbishop could have achieved his objective without breaking the positive law of the Church. This is an argument which I believe carries some weight, but, as was explained above, the possibility that the Vatican might not have been able "to deliver the goods" needed to be taken into consideration. But let us, for the sake of argument, accept that, objectively, the agreement would have been implemented properly and that an objective case of necessity did not exist. Would the Archbishop then have been validly excommunicated? By no means! Canon 1323, §4 and §7 indicate that the Archbishop would not have incurred excommunication if he believed sincerely that his arguments for a case of necessity were valid. Dr. Rudolph Kaschewsky, a German canonist who is affiliated with the international Una Voce movement, and has no connection with the Society of St. Pius X, explained the canonical position in the clearest possible terms:
Even if one were to call into question or actually deny altogether the existence of a situation of emergency as we have described it, the following would still apply: No one would deny that a bishop who, in the aforementioned situation, consecrates another one, would be at least subjectively of the opinion that he is in a situation of necessity such as we have described above. Thus one cannot speak of a premeditated violation of the law; for one who goes against the law, but believing even wrongly that his action is legitimate, does not act in a premeditated way.4
Dr. Kaschewsky then cited §7 of Canon 1323, which states that a person is not subject to a penalty who without any fault believes that the circumstances of §4 of this canon apply, i.e., the existence of a state of necessity.
There is a very old rule of law (Regula Juris 15) which gives the benefit of any doubt in cases of penal law: Odia restringi, et favores convenit ampliari. In other words, if there is a doubt as to whether a penalty has been incurred in a particular case it means that it has not been incurred.
The Archbishop Speaks
Archbishop Lefebvre's motivation in carrying out the consecrations was made clear in his consecration sermon:
We are not schismatics! If an excommunication was pronounced against the bishops of China, who separated themselves from Rome and put themselves under the Chinese government, one very easily understands why Pope Pius XII excommunicated them. There is no question of us separating ourselves from Rome, nor of putting ourselves under a foreign government, nor of establishing a sort of parallel church as the bishops of Palmar de Troya have done in Spain. They have even elected a pope, formed a college of cardinals... It is out of the question for us to do such things. Far from us be the miserable thought to separate ourselves from Rome.
It is not simply unjust but ludicrous to suggest that in consecrating bishops without a papal mandate Archbishop Lefebvre had the least intent of establishing a schismatic church. He is not a schismatic and will never be a schismatic. The Archbishop considers correctly that the Church is undergoing its worst crisis since the Arian heresy, and that for the good of the Church it was necessary for him to consecrate the four bishops to ensure the future of his Society. Canon Law provides for just such a situation, and even if one believes that the future of the Society could have been guaranteed without these consecrations, the fact that the Archbishop believed sincerely that it could not means, as Canon Law states clearly, that he has not incurred excommunication. Furthermore, while the Vatican allows such prelates as Archbishop Weakland to undermine the Faith with impunity it cannot expect Catholics to pay the least attention to its sanctions against a great and orthodox Archbishop whose entire life has been devoted to the service of the Church and the salvation of souls.
Dr. Eric M. de Saventhem, President of the International Una Voce Association, is one of the best informed laymen in the Church, and he knows the Archbishop intimately. Dr. de Saventhem, like myself, has no greater desire than to see a reconciliation between Mgr. Lefebvre and the Holy See during the Archbishop's lifetime. A quotation from a statement by Dr. de Saventhem which was published in the 15 February 1989 Remnant merits careful study:
In retrospect, the road leading to the consecrations of 30 June appears more paved with grave Roman (and, unfortunately, also papal) omissions than with Lefebvrist "obstinancies." And from the eyes of an informed public this cannot be hidden by attempting to present the Archbishop's act of grave disobedience as an offense against the Faith! It is said—today—that Mgr. Lefebvre has "an erroneous concept of Tradition." If this were so, Cardinal Ratzinger could not, on behalf of the Pope, have addressed to the Archbishop the following words in his letter of 28 July 1987: "Your ardent desire to safeguard Tradition by procuring for it 'the means to live and prosper' testifies to your attachment to the Faith of all time... the Holy Father understands your concern and shares it."
1. See Archbishop Lefebvre and the Vatican, by Father François Laisney, (The Angelus Press), pp. 126-127.
2. Laisney, pp. 205-208.
3. Laisney, p. 148.
4. Full text in The Angelus, July 1988, pp. 46-58.
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